So much has happened since the last post, and there's no way to explain it all. So I'll just cover the main things that have happened.

I finally started grad school. They weren't kidding when they told me it would be hard. Mamas, don't raise your sons and daughters to be grad students. I spend so much time reading, as I should, but I spend even more time avoiding reading, which I definitely shouldn't. I've already been to the library here in two months than I did in the entire four years I was at UCA, and I now have a primary place of residence where I actually sleep night after night. It has been an extremely long time since my head only hit one pillow night after night (though I still switch between my bed at the couch). This - being locked between the apartment walls, forcing myself to read things I know I'll forget - is what the title references. There are days that I don't go outside. And that is very strange.

A lot of things came along with grad school, including a cat named Tonks. She eats like a goat but looks like an arctic fox from behind and a lab rat from the front. She doesn't look so much like a lab rat now that she's gotten bigger, but when I first got her at the end of August, she was definitely a little mewing rat. As much trouble as she's been at times, she's been a comfort to me. She's in my face every morning, and she purrs on cue when I call her name. In a world where I wasn't sure what to expect at first, she was the first thing that made me feel like I had an obligation to be here - if it was only to dote on her like she was my only child (which we all know she is).

I'm obsessed with Glee, but I'm even more obsessed with avoiding work, and it's disturbing the limits I can take it to sometimes. Well, I take that back. The problems I've had have been more external than me, but this weekend it's been really bad - but even that's been because I'm scared. I have two term papers of 20 pages or more due at the end of the semester, and one of them is quite literally impossible. Even worse, I'm the one who let out enough rope to hang myself, no one else. It's crazy how that's happened twice with the two of the most important papers of my entire academic career - one of them being my Honors thesis. A professor won't give me a limitation, and then I go and try to write an impossible dissertation that even people with twenty years more training with me wouldn't try because they understand the nuances that make such far-reaching arguments impossible. In other words, I'm in an inescapable situation, I've got to bullshit my way out of this one, and I don't even know how to begin to cheat my limitations. My goal is to actually put pen to paper today (read: when I wake up this afternoon), so I'll be sure to report my plan of action, however nuts it may be.

Having an apartment has been interesting, but I don't know what else to say about that other than paying rent's alright, but utilities suck because it feels like gambling until the damn bill actually comes in. Is there a utilities god? I need a shrine to him.

I'm planning on starting a Glee series on VDCC.net, so watch out for that. Otherwise, I'll try to post here more often. If nothing else, it will certainly give me a constructive outlet, which I need. Playing video games and watching TV are not constructive, but writing? Writing is good.